Two Ways to Die
by reverse-will
Summary: A story about what happens between James and Mary before the start of the story of Silent Hill 2. Kind of makes James look like a not-very-good person! oo Content includes sexual themes, murder, lil' bit of language, suggestions of suicide.


Two Ways to Die  
  
A Silent Hill 2 fanfic by Catherine Spurgin  
  
February 2004  
  
I do not claim ownership of Silent Hill 2 or its characters.  
  
  
  
  
  
James remembered Mary on their wedding day. She was sitting beside him in his old car, turning to him and smiling, in the simple white dress she had made herself. She had wanted to go to Silent Hill for their honeymoon. James didn't understand and wasn't too excited about going to a quaint resort-type town, but she was adamant about it. He wasn't sure if his old car would make it all the way there and back in one piece. The car was still the same as it had been that day, but the girl was not. It had been a little over two years since then.  
  
Mary was beautiful then. She had her light brown hair professionally highlighted, but rarely wore cosmetics, which James still thought was strange. She was quiet and pale, but her blue eyes had a powerful vibrancy in them. She had always been slim, but had never looked unhealthy.  
  
But now, her hair hung off her skull in strings, long past being worth going to the beauty shop to highlight. She wore heavy foundation to cover her face now. Her skin was no longer attractively fair like a lady's who never had to work out in sunlight, but sallow and sagging like a dead thing's. Her eyes were lifeless and gray, and James could see her ribs showing plainly through her skin when she pulled off her clothes to step into the bath. He had tried to avoid having sex with her the last few months, but didn't have to worry about it for very long as she no longer had the energy or interest herself.  
  
The cancer had been feasting on Mary for a while now, but they were both blissfully unaware of it until thirteen months ago. James could still vividly remember the afternoon when they first noticed something wasn't right. Mary giggled as he chased her into the bedroom. She got down on the floor as if she were going to crawl under the bed to get away from him, but he quickly picked her up and tossed her lightly on the bed. He jumped on her and they hugged each other. They smiled, looking into each others' eyes, and James leaned down to kiss her. They had been truly in love that day. The couple had dozed off soon after making love, but James hadn't been asleep long when something inside his head disturbed him.  
  
(What? What's bothering me?....Mary?)  
  
It took him several minutes to realize what had bothered him enough to cause him to awaken. And then his belly sank as he remembered. He had felt something on, or actually in her while his hand had been on her breast. She was turned on her right side, her back to him. He carefully reached over and touched her left breast but couldn't feel anything unusual. Mary mumbled but seemed to go back to sleep. He thought perhaps he was only imagining things, but he still had a sinking feeling and knew he had to make absolutely sure before he could rest again. He pulled her towards him, rolling her on her left side to face him. He groped at her right breast. Her eyes opened wide and she stared at him, obviously being able to tell that something was wrong and that he wasn't just being horny.  
  
"James?" she asked tentatively.  
  
He looked into her face but didn't see her, as he had found what he had been morbidly looking for.  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
Over a year after his discovery, James sat in the corner of Mary's sewing room with his knees pulled up to his chin. He was randomly thinking about how childish it must look for a man of thirty-three to be sulking in the corner of a sewing room like a punished child. He freely admitted to himself that he really wanted to cry, but was still unable. His mind wandered again and he wondered if Mary would have gotten so sick if he hadn't squeezed the growth so hard in panic. He numbly imagined black, viscous poison invisibly seeping down the inside of Mary's skin as it dripped from the burst marble-sized tumor in her breast. Now, Mary had many tumors. That original tumor was gone, as well as both breasts, but there were plenty of tumors in her liver, her intestines, her lungs, probably even her brain. And now Mary was in the hospital again. She had been there almost a month this time. Without her, James didn't feel like he had much to fill his time. He had begun drinking. He had never liked the taste of alcohol when he was younger, but he was desperate for a way to escape. In his hand he held an old picture of Mary, from before they were married. The new Mary didn't look anything like the smiling healthy Mary in the picture. James laid it beside him on the carpet face-down.   
  
Not only was Mary's physical appearance deteriorating, but she was beginning to have horrible mood swings as well. James still vividly remembered the last time he visited her and brought her flowers. She had screamed at him to leave and he finally gave up, turning to go, but then she broke down and sobbed and begged for him to stay. He couldn't go on dealing with her like this. It was like she had become a monster, ugly and horrible and sucking his life away. But he still loved her.  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
That next night James was almost out of his vodka and was trying to get to the liquor store before it closed. Mary had kept him at the hospital almost all day, hoping that Dr. Garrett would make his rounds and that James could hear firsthand what was going on, but Dr. Garrett never showed that day.  
  
James was jarred out of his thoughts by bumping into someone he didn't even see at first. He turned his head to apologize to whoever it was, and stopped.  
  
He immediately found the woman he had walked into captivating. The first thing he noticed was that she looked remarkably like Mary in the face. Blond hair, though her roots were much darker, and blue eyes. But that's where the similarity stopped. She was dressed in a very tight red top that revealed her midriff, and an equally tight miniskirt that was pink with leopard print. Mary would have never been seen dressed in something so skimpy, or something that clashed so badly for that matter. And also would never have been employed as a prostitute.  
  
The prostitute's name was Rhea. James followed her out to a nearby cheap motel. He was already feeling quite guilty, and would never have gone in the first place if she was just some regular hooker off the street. But there was something he couldn't quite describe about her. He found he enjoyed himself better if he pretended she was Mary. It was relatively easy due to the physical similarities. Mary wasn't nearly as curvy or busty as Rhea was though, even before she became sick. In fact, Mary was rather flat and plain compared to Rhea, he thought, as he pulled off the brightly colored clothes and tossed them on the floor.  
  
As he pushed himself inside Rhea, he closed his eyes and imagined that it was Mary he was entering. But it was Mary with a lot more energy in the sack. And Mary with two very big breasts… He squeezed them. Breasts with implants, but they were there, and definitely had no marble-sized lumps. Mary with no lumps. Everything that had happened since was just like a bad dream… With this thought he thrust faster and almost reached orgasm.  
  
"Oh, Ma…" he began to cry out, and then realized where he really was.  
  
"Rhea!" he screamed out, and came. Rhea didn't seem to notice, or at least care about, his slip.  
  
  
  
James used Rhea's services a lot. She was often found near his favorite liquor store. After a couple of weeks, he began to tell her about Mary, and even brought Rhea over to their house. But he would never let them fuck on his and Mary's bed. Rhea would pout, but not push her limits too far. James still felt he loved Mary, but Rhea provided things Mary had never been able to do. Mary would never give him a blowjob or try anything much outside of basic intercourse, but Rhea of course had no problems with doing either. Rhea had the energy that Maria hadn't had since the earliest part of their marriage. Despite his feelings of guilt, James was having more fun with Rhea than he had for most of his marriage. Every time he visited Mary, she was so serious and moody. Well, she was dying…  
  
  
  
One day when James and Rhea were having a visit on his living room floor, the phone began to ring. He barely noticed until the answering machine picked up. His head jerked as he heard Mary's voice, almost excited enough to sound like the old Mary.  
  
"James! Call me back as soon as you can, I might be able to come home soon!"  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
James sat beside Mary in her hospital bed, waiting for Dr. Garrett to make his rounds. Mary had a roommate. She looked very old and very frail, and talked constantly.  
  
"Have you seen my dog, he's the only one who knows what's going on around here," the old woman questioned James. "Those aliens are going to take you away, you know!"  
  
James looked away with a disgusted look on his face.  
  
A little girl peeked her head into the room, her blond hair very short and wild. She had a smile on her face but scowled as soon as she saw James there.  
  
"Laura!" cried Mary. "I haven't seen you in such a long time!"  
  
"They finally got a room for me in the children's unit," said Laura, "And look! They changed my medicine and this new one isn't making my hair fall out!" She grinned.  
  
Mary turned to James. "You remember Laura, don't you?"  
  
"No, not really," replied James. He was tired from lack of sleep and didn't care much about this little brat bothering much sicker people.  
  
"Honey, get away from that water! People drown that way!" Mary's roommate lectured Laura. "But you and that young man over there, you two will be just fine together."  
  
"I sure wish you would go back to the nursing home soon!" yelled Laura.  
  
"Laura!" said Mary, shocked.  
  
A commanding man in a long white coat entered the room and stopped when he saw Laura. He frowned at her and she quickly left the room. Dr. Garrett put the paperwork he was carrying on the bedside table and pulled the stethoscope from around his neck to quickly examine Mary.  
  
"That man there is going to summon the devil!" Mary's roommate informed Dr. Garrett, pointing at James.  
  
Dr. Garrett pulled the curtain between the two beds. He briefly listened to Mary's lungs. "I'm going to go ahead and let Mary go home for now." He looked over at his papers and coughed nervously, then settled his eyes somewhere to the left of James' waist.  
  
"Her prognosis is not good and I don't give her much longer. But, she is stable for the time being, so I asked her if she would like to go home to spend time with her family for now," Dr. Garrett said quickly.  
  
James stared at Dr. Garrett until he was forced to look up at him.  
  
"How much longer, exactly?" asked James.  
  
"Well, anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, possibly longer or shorter, it's hard to know."  
  
Neither James nor Mary had much else to ask. Dr. Garrett shook both their hands and left.  
  
"He's got that other woman with him now," Mary's roommate told Dr. Garrett as he went out the door.  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
Mary came home with James that day. She mostly stayed in bed. She was emaciated, often in pain, and didn't have energy to do much, even to eat. As unbearable as it was to know that the woman who was his wife, his partner in life, and his best friend was in this kind of torment, it was agony to have her there at home where he could see her. As she lay dozing that afternoon, James watched her.  
  
She looks so fragile. It would be so easy for this to be finished. Her thin neck looked as brittle as a twig. She was so drowsy, would she notice if she was given five oxycodone tablets instead of the one and her other four medicines? He watched her breathe. Her chest didn't move much. James wondered if the heavy quilt would smother those delicate breaths. A pure accident would be all it would take. Just sleeping could be deadly to Mary. Wouldn't it be better to die that way than to die slowly in pain from the cancer?  
  
James still loved Mary, in his own way. But he resented her now. He was angry with her for getting sick, for ruining their marriage with her illness. He was tired of constantly taking care of her and tired of tolerating her mood swings and outbursts. And he could tell that she sensed this, in the way she would sometimes look at him, her face filled with emotional rather than physical pain. He felt like it was killing him.   
  
As far as James knew, Mary wasn't aware of his liaisons with Rhea. He snuck out of the house in the early evenings, more often than ever now that Mary was home. He knew that it was a terrible thing to do behind the back of his dying wife, but for those few moments in Rhea's arms, he could forget everything and feel happy again.  
  
During the next few days James would often lay in bed after waking up in the late mornings, watching his wife breathe. Her face was usually turned towards him. He couldn't look at her long; he could vividly imagine the closed lids opening and revealing those blue eyes darkened in disgust, and she would accuse him of what he knew he was going to do.  
  
Once she did open her eyes while he was looking at her. His breath stopped and his heart began to race, and their eyes met for a few moments.  
  
"I wish I could go back to Silent Hill, just one last time," she said.  
  
James just sighed and closed his eyes, not answering her. Even on the verge of dying she asked about going back to that town.  
  
  
  
One morning he had actually taken his pillow and held it over her, but he couldn't actually place it over his wife's face. He told himself he was doing this to help her, but still he was afraid those eyes, closed but seeming to look at him, would open before he could bring the pillow down, and he knew he couldn't bear the look on her face as she realized what was happening.  
  
Then Sunday morning came. James turned over in the bed to look at his wife's face and think about her death as he had so often the past week. But Mary was on her side, faced away from him. He stared at her for a few minutes, watching her side, bony even through her thick pajama top, sporadically rising and falling. She looked closer to death now than ever. James knew that if he was going to do it, he was going to have to do it now before it was too late. He seized his pillow, and quickly before he could see her eyes open, pushed it hard over her face with both hands. For a moment, her attempts to pull away were only reflexes in her sleep, then she awakened and screamed through the pillow, hitting harder. She hit the outside of his elbow hard, causing him to lose his grip as sharp pain jolted up his arm, and then the pillow was off and she stared at him with those wide blue eyes. But it was much too late for James to stop now. Her already dying and frail body was no match for James' healthy one. Her fingernails left deep wounds in James' arms from her struggling as he smothered her. He looked up at the ceiling as she flailed from beneath him, the look that was on her face burned into his vision. It was a long time before she became still. James held the pillow down for a much longer time than that, his blood dripping down his arms onto the sheets.  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
Mary died. So did James, in another way.  
  
James was numb. He didn't feel a thing. He told the paramedics he had woken up to find her dead. It was cool enough outside that no one found it unusual that he was wearing long sleeves to hide the scratches. No one but James knew that the sheets on the bed had been there less than an hour when the body was picked up. Of course no autopsy was done; she was supposed to be dead. The ravages of the cancer and its treatment hid the signs of suffocation on her body. James told family member after family member how he had woken up to find her no longer breathing, and of course he knew that she was dying but oh, what a shock. By the time of the funeral, James believed it himself. But of course his subconscious would never forget, and James suffered for it. He began drinking heavily, much more than he had before.   
  
James lived his life in a daze. No one questioned his prolonged grief too much. After all, poor James still lived alone, and he was a quiet person anyway.  
  
But soon even Rhea began seeing him less and less.  
  
"All you care about is that dead wife of yours!" she screamed at him several days ago when he was still unable to get hard after she'd been trying to give him a blowjob for half an hour. She stormed out and he hadn't seen her since. Now he felt that much more alone.  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
James balanced the big brown sack on his hip as he unlocked his mailbox. Checking mail was purely a reflex at this point. There was a single letter, an off-white envelope with no return address, addressed to "James Sunderland". He glanced at it, and then froze, his belly going cold.  
  
(Why does this make me feel so anxious? Why does it look so familiar..?)  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
Several hours later, long into the night, James continued to sit in his recliner. The TV was on but the channel it was tuned to had long since signed off and the white static from the screen spotlighted James in the room. His purchase from the liquor store was sitting abandoned outside the door to the apartment. He had laid it down to free himself to open the door and forgotten about it since. In his left hand was the open letter, crumpled. In his right was a handgun. James stiffly raised the hand holding the handgun and brought it to his face. After a moment he placed the barrel inside his mouth.  
  
(Silent Hill…our "special place"…)  
  
James stared into space with the gun in his mouth. He thought of Mary, and he thought of Rhea, and their two faces seemed to briefly merge into one for a moment.  
  
(I would give anything to have them back, or even just to have one or the other…)  
  
  
  
______________________________________   
  
Author's Notes:  
  
  
  
Some things about this story you might find interesting, or not. ^_^  
  
  
  
-The title, "Two Ways to Die", refers to the different deaths of Mary and James. Mary dies simply at James' hands, but while James is technically still alive, he's killed himself on the inside from his actions.  
  
  
  
-Mary and Rhea… Maria. Get it? =P For the purposes of this story, the entity named Maria that James finds later on is a combination of what he values most in Mary and the prostitute, and his choice at the end of the game is between his ideal woman or the real Mary.  
  
  
  
-Everything that Mary's confused old roommate in the hospital says is a reference to each of Silent Hill 2's endings. =P  
  
  
  
-The very last scene in this fic, with James in the recliner with the gun is supposed to be similar to the scene in the game in the apartments with the dead man in the chair. Read into that what you will.  
  
  
  
This is my first finished writing project of any kind in about a year. Tell me what you think, suggestions/constructive criticism welcome. ^_^ 


End file.
